


(Not) For Keeps

by paperstorm



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bittersweet, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Established Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, F/M, Fix-It, Happy Ending, M/M, POV Alternating, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-07 13:03:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18621178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperstorm/pseuds/paperstorm
Summary: It’s all seared into his brain, the feel of Bucky burned as sense memory into Steve’s hands, his taste lingering always on Steve’s tongue. There were times when he would have given anything to forget, but he never could.//A Stucky-flavoured alternate ending to Avengers: Endgame. Spoilers for the ending of the movie, please do not read if you haven't seen the movie yet and don't want to be spoiled.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ADDITIONAL SPOILER WARNING. THIS FIC SPOILS ENDGAME. PLEASE TURN BACK IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED.

Her hands are small, but she was never delicate. She was never in need of protection, his or anyone else’s. With both wrapped around one of his, her hands seem especially fragile, even though they’re capable of as much without serum and shield as Steve’s are with. She’s a dream; beautiful and sharply intelligent and astutely aware of her own worth. She’s bare-faced at the moment, red cheeks and lips wiped clean, smiling at him with so many indecipherable things in her dark chocolate eyes. Warmth, and affection, and something else that Steve can’t place.  
   
“How much longer do we have?” she asks, trailing gentle fingertips over the heel of his palm, down his forearm and back up.  
   
He frowns, tilting his head in question. She doesn’t accept his attempt to feign confusion. He should have known she wouldn’t.  
   
“Some moments are meant to last forever. Ours was not.” A sadder smile, and fingertips still moving, tracing invisible patterns on his skin. “I’ll be thankful the rest of my life I got to see you again. I won’t ever forget a minute.”  
   
“Peggy,” he whispers, gripping her hand a little tighter. His own are shaking.  
   
She brings her fingers up, cupping his cheek. He closes his eyes, and turns into her touch. “We both know, my love.”  
   
“A little longer,” he begs, voice breaking.  
   
“If that’s what you need,” she offers, generous and selfless. “But we’ll still know.”  
   
“What do we know?” he asks. He doesn’t really need to.  
   
“That you can’t stay.”  
   
He opens his eyes, to find hers swimming with unshed tears. “I could.”  
   
“That is not the path I want for you. You don’t belong here. Not when he’s waiting for you.”  
   
Steve blinks at her, and inhales noisily through his nose only to let it out shakily through parted lips.  
   
Peggy shifts in a little closer, placing a kiss to his cheek and stroking his hair back off his forehead. “Am I wrong?”  
   
“How do you know?”  
   
“You’ve said his name in your sleep.” Her mouth smiles, and her eyes are liquid and filled with more love than Steve deserves from one person, let alone two. “I don’t know how he’s still alive. I don’t need you to explain. But he’s waiting for you, back where you came from. Isn’t he?”  
   
Steve nods shortly. He feels the pull, invisible and unrelenting. He’s felt it every day since he first graced her doorstep, pulled her sobbing into his arms, promised he was alive and okay and begged her forgiveness for being away so long. It’s felt like a dream because it is. She’s right – it isn’t his life. Maybe it could have been, but it isn’t. It hurts, but maybe it’s better this way. Better she knows, and he has her blessing, than sneaking off in the middle of the night a week or a month or a year from now, when guilt finally overtook him and forced him to face what he’s done. For all the years he’s spent throwing himself between danger and the world, he’s always been profoundly selfish. Maybe it was never about saving others. Maybe it was always, all the way back to his teenage years picking fights with bullies in back alleys, about saving himself.  
   
“I shouldn’t have come at all,” he says regretfully. “It’s worse, isn’t it? Having to say goodbye again.”  
   
“Oh my darling.” She tips forward, resting her head on his shoulder. “You’re wrong. Knowing you’re alright, knowing you’re loved and safe and  _happy_ , is far, far better. Even though we have to say goodbye again.”  
   
“I do love you,” he says, needing her to know he means it.  
   
“I love you, too. I always will.” Her thumb slides under his eye. “But he loved you first.”  
   
He takes the hand that’s on his cheek, lacing his fingers through hers. “One last dance?”  
   
“Of course.” She rises to her feet and takes him with her, puts her arms around him in the center of her living room. He holds her close and sways with her, to music that only exists in his head.  
   
*           *           *  
   
“Where is he?” Bruce asks, wide-eyed and frantically flipping the switches on the board, banging his massive fists against it.  
   
“Get him back!” Sam shouts, panicked.  
   
Steve watches them, and Bucky next to them. Clothed in black, a casual zip-up jacket instead of a suit like everyone else, his hands in his pockets and his long hair resting on the tops of his shoulders. He’s calm, looking around slowly, like he expected this. He looks young again, except for his hair and the beard that would never have graced his cheeks before the war. His eyes, as always, hold inside the person he always was, the one Steve has known his entire life. They settle on Steve, yards away amongst the trees.  
   
“Guys,” he says, nodding toward Steve when the others look up at him.  
   
“What happened?” Bruce asks urgently, as they walk towards him.  
   
Steve shakes his head. “Just missed it by a bit.”  
   
“How the hell did you miss?” Bruce demands. Steve wonders if the concern and indignation is as much for his well-being as it is out of offence there might have been mistakes in the calculations. It reminds him, painfully, of Tony.  
   
“Had an extra stop to make.”  
   
Steve lifts the soft case in his left hand, unzipping it slowly and pulling out the shield. It’s shiny red and blue like his was, although the markings are slightly different. A different Steve wielded this shield, one with an entirely different life. One with different strengths and flaws, one with different details that make up who he is. It comforts him, to know there are multiple versions of himself existing in the universe. Somewhere in time and space, he’s still slow-dancing with Peggy to a scratchy ballad playing on a second-hand turn-table in their living room. This version of himself will ache forever under the weight of having to choose, but when all is added up, would always make this choice.  
   
He holds the shield up, towards Sam. “This is yours, if you want it.”  
   
Sam frowns, and shakes his head, confusion taking over his features. “You’re not gonna be Cap anymore?”  
   
“I’ve done enough damage.” Steve smiles at him. “Its your turn.”  
   
Gaping at him, Sam shakes his head again like he doesn’t know what to say. He turns to Bucky, who nods at him reassuringly. With an air of hesitance, Sam reaches out and takes the shield from Steve’s hands. He doesn’t put it on, but just holds it in his hands, turning it over and examining it, with reverence like it’s something precious. Steve never treated it that way. He carried it like a burden. The way Sam touches it cements the decision in Steve’s mind. The shield should have been an honor, and it’s time someone treated it as such.  
   
The wake continues for hours, and Steve allows himself the luxury of being surrounded by good people and happy memories, toasting Tony and Natasha and remembering them the way they deserve. As heroes, and as friends. Steve hasn’t processed, yet, how he’ll carry on without Natasha. He supposes that’s still to come. Maybe he’ll find a way to begin believing all those things he used to say to his support groups, about grieving and healing and moving on. It was always just words, when he said it to groups of broken strangers. He believed it for them, but not for himself. He’ll have no choice, now, but to learn how to believe it for himself.  
   
He’s at odds, when people start to leave. He hugs them all on their way out the door, and promises to see them soon, although he doesn’t know when that will be, and neither do they. It feels more like a thing he’s supposed to say, than a real promise. Their home at the compound was destroyed, and without Tony it won’t be rebuilt any time soon. Maybe not ever.  
   
As if reading his mind – and maybe he really can – T’Challa approaches him in the corner of the room, extending a hand that Steve shakes firmly. “You are always welcome in Wakanda, Captain Rogers.”  
   
“You don’t have to …”  
   
“As I said.” T’Challa interrupts, in his melodic voice and with a kind smile on his face, stepping in close and holding Steve by the shoulders. “The barrier will not be closed to you, or to any of your friends. If you need a place to stay. For as long as you need.”  
   
He makes a graceful exit before Steve can respond. Across the room, Shuri is hugging Bucky tightly. His arms, one flesh and one dark vibranium, are wrapped around her thin torso. They’re speaking, and Steve can’t hear what they’re saying but Bucky’s lips are curved into a soft, fond smile. When Shuri lets him go, she offers Steve a silly, exaggerated military salute from across the room, before she follows her brother from the cabin.  
   
As the sun sets over the lake, Steve stands at the shore and watches the light dancing on the water. It moves in the ripples, sparkling brilliant yellow and orange, and the reflection is bright in his eyes but he doesn’t look away from it. It’s peaceful, here. The kind of place Tony deserved to live out the rest of his days. Steve isn’t sure he believes any of the things they were taught in church when he was young, but he’d like to believe Tony is still here. Watching over his family. At peace.  
   
Footsteps approach behind him, and he knows from years with them who it is on either side just by the familiar sound of their footfalls. “Reminds me of the lake in Wakanda,” Bucky’s voice says, on Steve’s right.  
   
On his left, Sam pats his shoulder. “Doin’ okay?”  
   
“Yeah.” Steve smiles at him. It isn’t entirely a lie. It isn’t entirely the truth either, but hovers somewhere in the middle. Given the circumstances, Steve figures it’s as good as he could expect of himself.  
   
“What now?” Sam asks.  
   
“I don’t know.” Steve exhales. “You?”  
   
“I might need a minute.” The shield is back in Sam’s hands, and he lifts it to examine it once more. The low sunlight glints off it, sending light bouncing back across the lake. “To figure all this out.”  
   
“Of course. Whatever you need.” Steve tries to smile reassuringly at him. “You know how to get in touch with me, if I can help.”  
   
Sam nods. He moves in for a hug, and Steve returns it heartily. He remains for just a moment longer than maybe he should with Sam’s arms around him, hating goodbyes. He’s said too many of them lately. At least this one isn’t permanent. When Sam pulls away from him, he goes around Steve to briefly hug Bucky, too, before he heads back up the lawn towards the house. Steve doesn’t ask where he’s going, or what his plan is. If Sam wants him to know, he’ll say so. It isn’t Steve’s business anymore, and that’s the way it should be.  
   
He turns finally, to look at Bucky. Blue eyes sparkling in the light, skin gleaming in it, whole and healthy and  _here_. It burns tragedy in Steve’s chest, remembering all the man in front of him has endured, at the same time as it blooms something warm and bright and hopeful. He has no right to be hopeful, no reason to believe anything will turn out the way he’d like it to, but he is all the same.  
   
“Hey, Stevie,” Bucky says softly, using the nickname Steve hasn’t heard in years. He hadn’t realized he missed it, until right this moment.  
   
He squeezes his molars together and swallows against the emotion that swells inside him.  
   
“What now?” Bucky asks, echoing Sam’s question from minutes ago.  
   
Steve shakes his head, and repeats, “I don’t know. I really don’t.”  
   
Bucky’s smile is bittersweet, but his lips are bowed and pink and Steve knows them so intimately. He knows every inch of the man before him. He learned it all a century ago, and could never, ever forget one single detail. Not the curve of his spine or the smell of his hair or the scratch of his voice in the morning. Not the sparkle of his laugh or the heat of his anger or the fierceness with which he’d protected Steve even as Steve fought him on it every step of the way. It’s all seared into his brain, the feel of him burned as sense memory into Steve’s hands, his taste lingering always on Steve’s tongue. There were times when he would have given anything to forget, but he never could.  
   
Bucky moves in a step closer, and then hesitates, a question in his eyes. Steve nods quickly, tugging Bucky into a hug, full-bodied and long. If anything could hope to heal him, it’s this. When they were younger, Bucky’s arms were the only place in the world Steve allowed himself to be weak. Now, they make him strong.  
   
Leaning back enough to see Steve’s face, Bucky blinks up at him with shiny eyes. “Shuri said …”  
   
“T’Challa said, too,” Steve confirms, not needing Bucky to finish the sentence to know what he’s about to say.  
   
“I got no place else to go,” Bucky says, with another hesitant smile. “You?”  
   
Steve shakes his head.  
   
“Somebody better have been taking care of my goats.”  
   
Wondrously, miraculously, Steve laughs.  
   
*           *           *  
   
The Wakanda skyline is a beautiful as ever. All traces of the destruction have vanished, as if the battle that destroyed this place never happened. The city glitters below, vibrant and alive, as Steve looks out at it from the expansive windows. The suite at the palace is sprawling and modern, with vast white rooms and astounding technologies, stocked with food and clothing and other essentials. It’s far more than he needs or deserves, but it had been offered to him and Steve wonders if maybe it’s time he start learning to accept what people want to give him instead of being a persistent advocate for his own misery. When Steve had strolled through the bustling, colorful streets that morning, no one had looked twice at him. He’d disappeared, in the crowd and the heat and the noise, and felt something approaching respite for the first time in a long time. Since the last time he’d been here, over five years ago.  
   
“How long did you stay with her?”  
   
Steve doesn’t have to ask what he means, or how he knows. Bucky always knows without Steve needing to say a word. He’s never been able to hide anything important, it’s always all over his face in a language Bucky has been fluent in since they were small. He turns, finding Bucky seated at the table in the open kitchen with a steaming mug in front of himself, and a second at the empty place across the table. His long hair is half up, tied into a knot at the back of his head with pieces falling around his shoulders and into his eyes. The simple white t-shirt reminds Steve of Brooklyn; of Bucky in his undergarments, sweating in the suffocating July heat, always insistent on pulling Steve close to him even though they were both sticky. He’s beautiful, in a way that hurts in Steve’s chest. Steve goes to him, and sits.  
   
“Three weeks,” he says, in a small voice. He licks his lips and stares into the mug in his hands.  
   
“Is that all?” Bucky sounds surprised.  
   
Steve swallows. It clicks in his throat. He can’t look up, can’t see Bucky’s face as he admits, “part of me wanted to stay forever.”  
   
“You should have.”  
   
Eyes closing, Steve frowns and shakes his head. When he opens them again, Bucky is still staring at him, kindness and understanding shining in his ocean-blue eyes. It hurts more than anything else. He was the sweetest thing Steve had ever known, a lifetime ago in Brooklyn. He was made of sunshine, soft skin and easy smiles, infectious laughter, relentless optimism, endless compassion. But after everything the world has done to him since, he shouldn’t be capable of compassion anymore. He should be hardened and cruel and seeking to spread around some of that torment just to lessen the burden on his own shoulders. But he isn’t. He’s still kind.  
   
“I couldn’t,” Steve breathes. The tragedy of it hits him again, hard and sideways. Leaves him wanting to curl into a ball on the floor and mourn for things he never really had and lost anyway, all the same. “I didn’t belong there. Part of me will always love her, and always wonder what would have happened if things had been different. But they weren’t different. And that wasn’t my life.”  
   
“It should have been.” Bucky’s voice is soft, too. He reaches out and touches Steve’s forearm with his metal hand, just for a moment. Just one brief touch and then his fingers fall away and settle back on the table between them. “You deserved it.”  
   
“You deserved more,” Steve tells him. “And got much less.”  
   
“I got you.”  
   
Steve exhales heavily through his nose, a nauseous wave rolling through his stomach. His head hangs. “God. That’s worse than nothing, isn’t it?”  
   
Bucky reaches out again and takes his hand, fingers sliding in between Steve’s and squeezing. “It’s worth everything.”  
   
Steve shakes his head again, and doesn’t know how that could be true, no matter how much he wishes he could believe it.  
   
“Steve, even …” Bucky’s other hand comes up to join the tangle, flesh fingers trailing over the back of Steve’s hand, warm and gun-callused. “Even if it’s the end, for us. It’s meant everything. The time we had, the last time we were here … if I knew … when Hydra had me, in those early years, if somehow I could have known that decades into the future, I’d get almost two years with you, with a protective shield over our heads, hiding from the rest of the world with you under the African sun. If I’d known that was coming, all those years while they were slowly killing Bucky and turning me into something else … they’d never have broken me. I could’ve withstood anything,  _anything_  they had, if I knew you were in the future waiting for me. Even if that was the last time.”  
   
Steve’s stomach rolls again, and his eyes burn with tears that he tries to blink away. “Buck …”  
   
“Please don’t blame yourself,” Bucky says urgently, knowing where Steve’s head will go. “That wasn’t my point, nothing that happened to me was ever your fault.”  
   
“I let you go.”  
   
“No, you didn’t.”  
   
“I let you go so many times,” Steve argues. The tears do fall, and he doesn’t make any effort to stop them. His shoulders tremble and salt water drips from his eyes and splashes onto the table. “I let you go off to war without me, I let you fall to your death off that train. I let you go after you pulled me outta the Potomac, I – ”  
   
“ _Stop_ ,” Bucky says harshly, squeezing Steve’s hand harder, tugging it to make Steve look at him. “None of that is true. You tried to save me so many times, Steve. Just because you couldn’t, doesn’t mean you meant to let me go.”  
   
“I don’t want it to be the last time,” Steve admits, breathless, with his heart beating into his throat.  
   
Bucky tips his head to the side. “What?”  
   
“The last time we were here. Those two years, when I came to see you between missions, the days we spent with the Border Tribe, the nights we spent in your hut. That was the happiest time of my whole life. I don’t want that to be the end. I came back because I can’t … I don’t  _want_ to be without you.”  
   
Bucky’s lips part, shaking his head minutely, and then he stands, pulling Steve up with him. Steve circles his arms around Bucky’s waist because he can’t resist it, can't keep from tugging him in closer. He has no right to, anymore, but he’s still selfish.  
   
“It’s not fair, for me to ask you for anything,” he says.  
   
“Ask me.” Bucky’s arms hook around his shoulders, looking up at Steve with fierce determination in his eyes.  
   
“I love you,” Steve confesses instead. It shouldn’t feel like an admission of guilt, but it does, until Bucky smiles.  
   
The smile Steve knows, the one he’s always known. The one that’s still, after all these years, made of sunshine.  
   
“I’ve always loved you,” Bucky murmurs. His lips ghost over Steve’s cheek, caressing the words into his skin. “Always.”  
   
“I don’t know where we go from here. I don’t know anything,” Steve whispers. He notices, belatedly, that they’re swaying. Dancing, to music that still only exists in his head.  
   
“Me neither. It doesn’t matter. Not as long as I have you.”  
   
Steve turns his face so his lips can find Bucky’s in a real kiss, slow and long, spilling into it everything he feels but doesn’t have the words just now to communicate effectively. For the first time in five years, he slides his mouth against Bucky’s, soaking it in, dizzy with the familiarity and the electricity of having it back when he thought he never would. Bucky gasps and parts his lips to let Steve taste him. His hands slide into Steve’s hair, strong fingers holding him. It feels desperate, like they’re clinging to something that might turn back to dust at any moment, but at the same time it feels like coming home. Bucky has always been his home.  
 


	2. Chapter 2

“It’s dripping down your arm.”  
   
Steve points, and Bucky looks and swears. He lifts his wrist to his mouth and licks, cleaning the trail of ice cream that’s sliding down his forearm. When he looks back up, Steve is smirking and staring down at the cone in his own hand.  
   
“What?” Bucky asks.  
   
“Nothing.” Steve licks his ice cream, exaggerated and purposely sexual, and Bucky huffs and laughs reluctantly.  
   
“Fuck off.” He bumps Steve’s shoulder with his own as Steve snickers.  
   
Steve’s nose is already sunburnt, but Bucky doesn’t want to move into the shade. It’s warm here, with the clear sky above them and grass underneath them and Steve next to him. There’s no grass in Brooklyn. It’s all been relentlessly paved over, and Bucky craves nature sometimes. Not that Coney Island is exactly the wilderness, but it’s a little less concrete than Brooklyn.  
   
Steve bites at the cone once the ice cream is gone, and then tosses the rest of it to a flock of encroaching pigeons that have been hovering nearby, hoping for scraps. A few of them fight over it, pecking it into smaller pieces so they all get a taste. Bucky swallows the last mouthful of his own frozen treat and then throws his cone over, as well. He’s never liked the cones anyway. The ache of eating something cold too fast swells behind his eyes, and he presses the heel of his palm to his forehead.  
   
“Ow,” he comments, as Steve glances at him and then shakes his head.  
   
“You’re an idiot.”  
   
“You choose to live with me, what does that make you?”  
   
“I wouldn’t if I had any better options,” Steve states flatly, but he’s lying. He lies back, stretching out on his back on the grass.  
   
Bucky mirrors him. He tucks one hand behind his head, and lets the other rest between them. They’re out in public so they have to be careful, but Bucky covertly lets his hand drift over so the backs of his fingers are touching Steve’s. Out of the corner of his eye, and he doesn’t dare look closer, he can see Steve smiling.  
   
He inhales and opens his eyes, blinking in the darkness for a moment before he can place himself in his current surroundings. He stares at the ceiling, gleaming white even in the lack of light, trying to remember. Even now, sometimes his memories are inconsistent. Long forgotten moments come back to him all the time, and other times he can’t work out fact from his own imaginings. Sometimes he thinks he remembers things, but can’t know for sure whether they really happened. He has a vivid, brilliant, technicolor memory of going to Disneyland with Steve, but Steve swears they never did.  
   
The mattress dips next to him, and he turns his head to see Steve’s eyes open, looking at him with his hand resting underneath his cheek on the pillow. “You okay?”  
   
Bucky nods. “Did we go to Coney Island?”  
   
Steve frowns. “Yeah. All the time.”  
   
“Which rides did I like?”  
   
“Anything but the ones that spun around really fast. Those made you sick. You puked on my shoes, once.”  
   
Bucky wrinkles up his nose. “That’s disgusting.”  
   
“Yes it was,” Steve agrees. His forehead twists into a frown again, and he reaches over, letting his hand settle in the center of Bucky’s chest. It’s warm and heavy, and Bucky focuses on it. “You sure you’re okay?”  
   
“Just a weird dream,” Bucky promises. It hadn’t been a weird dream, it had been a wonderful dream, but he isn’t sure how to vocalize that. “Sometimes … I can’t tell what are real memories and what I’ve just made up.”  
   
“Still?”  
   
“Yeah.”  
   
Steve exhales slowly. He shifts in a little closer, and closer still when Bucky meets him halfway. Steve’s head rests on his shoulder, and Bucky cards metal fingers through his hair. It’s longer, now, like it was before. He hasn’t been shaving much lately, and his beard tickles Bucky’s neck. Everything is so similar to how it was, the last time they were together here. But it’s different in ways that are palpable. They’re both different.  
   
“I’m okay, Steve,” he says softly, because he can feel Steve worrying.  
   
“Good.” Steve drapes an arm over him, and kisses a spot over his collarbone.  
   
*           *           *  
   
The hut that was Bucky’s belongs to someone else, now. Bucky isn’t planning on asking for it back. It was never really his in the first place, just loaned to him. He visits it anyway, walking to the border village on a sunny morning and sitting at the edge of it, looking at the encampment of small clay structures where he lived for two years. He found Steve again, in that hut. With decades and endless tragedy between them, Steve had come back to him, found him broken and struggling as a fugitive granted asylum in this beautiful place, held his hand and listened as Bucky worked through his traumas, kissed him near a waterfall, held him close at night when the terrors returned. Bucky doesn’t dream about the chair as much as he used to. It still peppers itself into his subconscious from time to time but now the nightmares are mostly of Steve being taken from him, bloodied and lifeless or ripped into another dimension or simply regretting his decision and realizing Bucky isn’t what he wants. Up and leaving one day, going back to New York, making a different life for himself without Bucky in it.  
   
Across the field, a teenage girl waves at him. Bucky remembers her. He remembers them all, the people who had graciously taken him in, given him food and clothing, provided tasks to keep him occupied and responsibilities to make him feel he was contributing, whispered behind their hands about  _Captain America_  when they thought he couldn’t hear. They’d saved him, every one of them. He wouldn’t have lasted in that apartment in Romania. It was a miracle he evaded capture for as long as he did. Sooner or later, someone was going to find him. His only saving grace was that when someone did find him, it had been Steve. He waves back, and wishes she’d come over to say hello. She doesn’t.  
   
The next day, he goes back and brings Steve with him. Their new house is much bigger, on a peaceful patch of land at the edge of the city, and Bucky likes it. He likes the creek that runs behind it and the windows in the kitchen that face the morning sun and the big, comfortable bed where he sleeps with Steve wrapped around him. But he still misses his hut, and his sleeping mat, and his pathetic trunk of meager belongings and his one wooden chair. It had been more than he’d deserved, then, and it was given to him so generously. It had been 70 years since Bucky had last known kindness. It felt strange, at first, and then he’d inhaled it like a drug.  
   
“I kissed you in there,” Steve says to him, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s shoulders from behind. Bucky brings his hands up, hooking them over Steve’s forearms, holding on, and leans back into his warmth. “For the first time since 1945.”  
   
“I dreamt about you every night, in Bucharest.” Bucky squeezes the muscle under his flesh hand. “Sometimes they were nightmares. But in the good ones you kissed me and held my face in your hands and told me you forgave me.”  
   
Steve kisses his cheek and then buries his face in Bucky’s neck. “Nothin’ to forgive. Nothing you did was ever your fault.”  
   
*           *           *  
   
“Steve,” Bucky breathes. He grips him, fingers squeezing the meat of Steve’s back, keeping him close as they move. Steve moans above him, mouthing along Bucky’s jaw, lips wet and warm through his beard. Bucky turns his head, finds Steve’s mouth to kiss it, sharing moist air and stuttered sighs. Steve dips his tongue into Bucky’s mouth and Bucky sucks at it greedily, wanting more, always needing so badly to taste him and feel him so he knows it’s real. He can’t trust his mind to know fact from fiction, and this can’t be fiction. He wouldn’t survive it, if this was all just a dream.  
   
“You always feel so good,” Steve whispers, dragging his lips back over Bucky’s cheek.  
   
“Harder,” Bucky whimpers. “Need to feel it.”  
   
“I’m right here.” He obliges Bucky’s request, snapping his hips more forcefully so he’s hitting the spot inside that puts stars behind Bucky’s eyes.  
   
“Stay.” Bucky holds him so tightly, doesn’t let him move away. It’s nonsensical to beg for it, Steve wasn’t trying to go anyway so it’s stupid to ask him not to. But Bucky needs the reassurance, even if he hates himself for it. Steve’s lying on him, moving so Bucky’s body shifts underneath him, filling him up from the inside, his stomach rubbing between Bucky’s legs where he needs to feel it the most.  
   
“Not goin’ anywhere,” Steve promises. “I’m here, babydoll.”  
   
Steve never used to call him that. It was Bucky’s name for him, a lifetime ago in Brooklyn. Steve always complained about it, and smiled over it secretly when he thought Bucky wasn’t looking, but he never returned it. Now, he does. Bucky’s eyes close, and he just feels. Lets himself be kissed and fucked and held once it’s over. Let’s Steve wrap him up in strong arms and keep him close.  
   
“I don’t want you to regret me,” Bucky admits quietly, pressed against Steve’s bare chest. It’s safe, in this spot, but he’s still in danger, confessing things like that.  
   
“Buck,” Steve sighs. He puts a bended finger under Bucky’s chin and lifts it so he can press a gentle kiss to Bucky’s lips. When Bucky looks at him, there is an equal mix of love and worry in Steve’s eyes, and Bucky can’t look at it directly. It hurts too much. He hides again, his face against Steve’s neck.  
   
“We could find a different way for you to go back.”  
   
“I don’t wanna go back.” Steve’s arms squeeze around him, fingers brushing his vibranium arm. Unlike the one Hydra put on him, Bucky can feel with this one. Not as much as his real arm, not quite the same level of sensation, but it’s something. He can feel Steve’s fingertips moving over the metal plates, muted and watered-down but still there.  
   
“Are you sure?”  
   
“If I tell you something, are you gonna listen to me?”  
   
Bucky nods, although they both know it isn’t that simple. Sometimes Bucky’s heart wants to believe things but his head won’t let him. Sometimes there are voices, old handlers, with their whips and their knives and their sharp, wicked words, whispering to him that he’s worthless. That he’s garbage, that he’s lucky they even bother to keep him alive when it would be so much easier to discard him like the useless waste of flesh and bone that he is.  _What would your Captain think of you now?_ But Steve loves me, Bucky would always insist. They’d smile like wolves and taunt, enjoying their game.  _Why would he?_  
   
Steve rolls him, getting back on top of Bucky, propped up on his elbows. He kisses, slow and sweet and soul-deep, and then he brushes Bucky’s sweaty hair back and looks into his eyes. Bucky could drown in all that clear, endless blue.  
   
“I’ve been in love with you since we were teenagers,” Steve says. He bumps his nose against Bucky’s, once, twice, back and forth. “You remember that, right? That’s real, that’s not something you imagined.”  
   
Bucky breathes, tries to let the smell of them together absolve him, and nods. “Okay.”  
   
“I’m exactly where I want to be.” Steve lowers himself, covering Bucky from shoulders to shins like a weighted blanket. Bucky wraps his arms around Steve’s broad back, clinging to him.  
   
“I love you.” Bucky’s voice wavers, weak and desperate.  
   
“I know. I know, sweetheart,” Steve soothes. His thumb moves in a slow arc over Bucky’s jaw. “I love you so much.”  
   
“You’re really gonna stay here, forever?” Bucky asks, disbelieving. The words taste so bitter on their way out of his mouth. “Just making breakfast and wandering around the village and reading and doing nothing at all? For the rest of your life? Don’t you want more than that?”  
   
“That’s what I’m gonna do tomorrow. And probably the day after that. I don’t know about forever. I know I’ll take you with me, though. No matter what.”  
   
_But Steve loves me_ , Bucky tries to scream in his head. Louder, than the voices disagreeing.  
   
“I would happily do nothing with you forever,” Steve tells him. He nuzzles under Bucky’s chin. He used to do that a lot, when they’d lie like this in their lumpy bed in Brooklyn. Bucky wonders if Steve misses when his cheeks were smooth, when his skin was a softer expanse for Steve to rub his nose against. He might ask, although not now.  
   
“Don’t let me be a regret,” Bucky insists. “I’m not saying I am now. But if I ever become that, you gotta leave. Don’t let me be a choice you wish you hadn’t made.”  
   
“Never,” Steve whispers. His nose moves, down to the hollow of Bucky’s throat. Lips press into his skin. “If I lived a million lifetimes, I would never regret you.”  
   
*           *           *  
   
Cranes fly overhead, massive and majestic. Bucky can hear the swoop of their wings, disturbing the quiet, still air around them. He squints up at them, lifting his hand to block the sun. Steve takes it, bringing Bucky’s fingers up to his lips and then settling them back down against Bucky’s chest, their hands clasped. Bucky tips his head back to see Steve smiling down at him. His lap is warm under Bucky’s head, legs folded to make a pillow for Bucky to lay on. His other hand cards through Bucky’s hair. Every time he thinks about cutting it, Steve spends a day with his fingers in it as if he can sense what Bucky was considering, and then he changes his mind.  
   
“What are you thinking about?” Steve asks.  
   
Bucky shakes his head. “Nothing, really. Just … thinking.”  
   
“Tell me later?”  
   
“Really nothin’ to tell.”  
   
Steve lets it go, fingers still moving in Bucky’s hair. He scratches lightly over his scalp, and Bucky closes his eyes and leans into the touch.  
   
“We really never went to Disneyland?” he asks.  
   
He can hear the sad smile on Steve’s face as he answers, “no. Not together, anyway.”  
   
“I don’t know why I remember it so clearly.”  
   
“Could be the decades of brainwashing,” Steve suggests, lilting just a little, making a joke so they can laugh instead of cry.  
   
“Oh yeah, that must be it,” Bucky jokes back.  
   
“Maybe you were there? At some point?”  
   
“Did anybody ever get assassinated there?”  
   
“I don’t know.” Steve is quiet for a moment before continuing. “We could find out, if it’s important to you. To know.”  
   
Bucky shakes his head again. “It doesn’t matter.”  
   
Steve is quiet for a while. Still absently petting Bucky’s hair like he’s a cat curled up in Steve’s lap, he looks out over the lake. Bucky squints up at him, always taking any opportunity to reinforce his memories of those features, just in case. Just so he’ll never forget again. Steve’s jaw is stronger, now, than when they were young men a hundred years ago. But his nose still has that bump in it from when he got it broken in a schoolyard fight when they were 12, and his cheeks still flush so easily, blood rushing quick under all that freckled skin, and his eyes are still bluer than the sky.  
   
“I’m gonna be burnt if we sit here much longer,” Steve says, examining his own arms and poking at his skin.  
   
“Your fault for being so pasty,” Bucky tells him.  
   
Steve grins at him. “We’re both Irish, how did you get skin that tans so nice and I just turn into a tomato?”  
   
“‘Cause I’m better than you. Always have been.”  
   
His smile widens, and he laughs softly and nods in agreement. “Yeah.”  
   
Bucky lets his eyes fall closed again, and despite Steve’s words he makes no move to get out of the sun.  
   
“Sam’s coming tomorrow,” Steve says.  
   
“For what?”  
   
“Not sure. He’s running recon on something for Fury, didn’t give me details on the phone.”  
   
“Are you gonna go with him? If he needs your help?”  
   
Steve swallows. “Not sure about that either. Wait and see what he’s up to, I guess.”  
   
“Would you?” Bucky presses. “If he asked?”  
   
“If I did, I’d come right back as soon as it wraps up.”  
   
“That’s not what I meant.”  
   
“I know.”  
   
He doesn’t offer anything further. Bucky sits up, turning over and straddling Steve’s lap, settling onto his thighs. Steve leans back against the tree trunk behind him, hands coming up to wrap around the back of Bucky’s neck. Bucky leans forward and kisses him.  
   
“We’re not alone,” Steve whispers against his lips.  
   
Bucky can hear the laughter, a couple of kids in a rowboat across the lake, their happy shrieks ringing out over the water. “Good thing I wasn’t planning on fucking you right here, then.”  
   
Steve smiles against his mouth. “That sounds nice, though.”  
   
“Later,” Bucky promises.  
   
“I’m happy,” Steve says, returning to their previous topic. His smile is genuine and his eyes are brimming with emotion. “You know that, right? I’m happy here, with you. I’m not itching to run off with Sam.”  
   
“You could. If you wanted to. Fight bad guys with him and then come back here when you’re done, like you did before.”  
   
“We should plant cucumbers,” Steve says. He’s been tilling a patch of soil behind their house, clearing a few trees to let more sunlight in and fencing it off to protect it from animals. There’s a stall in the market that sells seeds and small plants. He’s also mentioned goats. Bucky doesn’t know where they would get those, but he isn’t against the idea.  
   
At the moment, it’s deflection. “Steve.”  
   
“I don’t even know what Sam wants, Bucky.” Steve brushes the backs of his knuckles over Bucky’s cheek. “If he needs our help, we’ll talk about it. No use getting ahead of ourselves.”  
   
Bucky sighs, but lets Steve pull him in. He lets himself be held, with the sun on his back and Steve’s arms around him. “You used to hate cucumbers.”  
   
“I still hate cucumbers. But you like them.”  
   
“Some people buy diamonds, you know. If you’re expecting an increase in head for bringing home vegetables …”  
   
Steve chuckles, low and warm in Bucky’s ear. “You want a diamond ring?”  
   
“No.” Bucky rolls his eyes even though his face is against Steve’s neck.  
   
“Want a regular ring?” Steve asks, almost off-hand, like he’s asking what Bucky wants in his coffee. “Wanna marry me?”  
   
Bucky blinks a few times, and frowns, and sits up so he can see Steve’s face.  
   
Steve shrugs one shoulder. “You can say no.”  
   
“Are you seriously asking?”  
   
Another shrug, but Steve smiles at him. “Yeah. Not something I’d really thought about before just now, to be honest, but. Yeah, I’m asking. If you want.”  
   
“What would it even mean? We already live together, nothing would be different.”  
   
“Always the romantic.” Steve laughs softly. “Never mind, forget I said anything.”  
   
“Hey.” Bucky takes Steve’s face in his hands, melted by the sincerity shining in his eyes. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”  
   
“Yeah?”  
   
Bucky nods, emotion swelling in his chest. “Yeah. I want that.”  
   
“Okay.”  
   
Bucky kisses him slowly, trying to pour his heart into it.  
   
*           *           *  
   
“Hey, Buck? Can you come here for a minute?” Steve’s voice calls from downstairs.  
   
“Just a sec!” Bucky calls back, around a mouthful of toothpaste. He finishes and spits into the sink, rinsing his mouth out and wiping leftover foam off with the hand towel. He grabs a hair-tie and pulls his damp hair back off his neck, twisting it onto a knot at the back of his head, and then he jogs down the stairs.  
   
The lights are off in the living room, and there are lit candles on the coffee table and the floor and the shelves on the wall. Bucky looks around, confused, at Steve in the middle of the room, glowing in candlelight.  
   
“What are you doing?”  
   
“Figured I didn’t do this quite right the other day.” Steve shrugs. He lowers himself to one knee on the floor, and Bucky stares at him.  
   
“Where did you get candles?” he asks.  
   
“Shuri.” Steve grins and holds out his hand. “Will you just get over here, you’re ruining it.”  
   
Bucky goes to him. Steve takes Bucky’s hand in his and pulls something from his pocket with his other, opening his fingers and presenting a tiny off-white oval, cupped in the middle of his palm.  
   
“What the fuck is that?”  
   
Steve grins, entirely too pleased with himself. “Cucumber seed.”  
   
“Oh my God.” Bucky bursts into laughter. “You’re such an idiot.”  
   
“Will you be Mr. Idiot?”  
   
“I’m gonna take back my yes if you don’t stop,” Bucky warns. He tugs Steve to his feet. Steve laughs brightly and wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist.  
   
“Marry me?”  
   
“ _Yes_ , asshole. Stop talking and kiss me.”  
   
Steve does, hugging Bucky tightly and momentarily lifting him right off the ground. He speaks paragraphs without saying a thing, as he slides his lips against Bucky’s, and Bucky hears every word.

**Author's Note:**

> [come talk to me on tumblr if you want!](http://paper-storm.tumblr.com/)


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